Not exactly breaking news: former Maryland lieutenant governor Michael Steele is the new chairman of the Republican National Committee. Polipundit has a blow-by-blow account of the six rounds (and five hours) of yesterday's balloting to achieve a majority of support from the 168 delegates. Five candidates started the day. At the end it came down to Steele and South Carolina's Katon Dawson. Steele prevailed by a count of 91-77.
I followed up with two of Colorado's three voting RNC members afterward to get their thoughts, and received very similar reactions to the results.
"Michael Steele will be a great spokesperson for our party," said state GOP chairman Dick Wadhams.
"Michael Steele is one of the Republican Party's most articulate … [Read more...]

Anyone out there with kids who has run across this animated series of books and videos? With the highly active imagination of a nearly 3-year-old in our house, members of our household rapidly assume and change identities to fit the characters in the Spot series. This morning I went from being a dog to a hippo to an alligator to a monkey in less than 90 seconds.
No dull moments in my life. … [Read more...]

The true-believing capital-L Liberals are the unquestioned experts on your life, the universe, and all that. Supposed experts who appear to disagree? Well, they are just a delusion of Right-wing fantasy. When it comes to the great all-encompassing theory of climate change, pay no attention to these highly-respected international scientists (or the scientist formerly in charge of many NASA climate projects).
When the great Barack Obama speaks ex cathedra, we must listen. Not only on climate change, but also on the economic recession. Recently he told us: "There is no disagreement that we need action by our government, a recovery plan that will help to jumpstart the economy." The President's glorious speech supersedes the more than 200 … [Read more...]

Democrat pollsters are hedging their bets over the re-election chances of Colorado Governor Bill Ritter. The well known, respected local election analyst Floyd Ciruli says:Although Bill Ritter works hard and cares about Colorado, he fails to inspire confidence among the most attentive publics. Of course, Colorado governors tend to be re-elected, and the Republicans are still on the defense after a half a decade of election losses, but Ritter faces a difficult re-election....
Ritter and his party know he is vulnerable. Expect a strong effort to survive. [emphasis added]
On the other hand, the Democrat survey firm Public Policy Polling (PPP) observes something different from its new survey results: … [Read more...]

Last night I told you about the inspiring testimony of citizens in support of financial transparency for Colorado schools. Today, it was the legislators' turn to do the damage. And damage they did:Senator Bob Bacon introduced an amendment that establishes a â€œvoluntary pilot programâ€ for transparency. It passed and is now on its way to the full floor of the Senate. Senator [Ted] Harvey asked to open up the bill for additional testimony since it had been altered dramatically. Bacon, chair of the committee, said no. Senator Harvey also tried to kill his own bill. Harvey did say he would bring the bill back next year.
Bacon, a former educator, used words like â€œcruelâ€ and â€œfearâ€ to describe how school districts may respond to … [Read more...]

It's not often that I can say Congressional Republicans make me proud by their actions. So let's etch January 28, 2009, in stone as one of those momentous occasions. Hats off to the House GOP yesterday for standing 100 percent united against the Obama-Democrat trillion dollar pork bill that promises to mount piles of debt on my generation and future generations.
Of course, this is small consolation as there aren't enough Republicans - with or without backbone - to stop the socialist steamroller "stimulus" from gliding through. But at least if the GOP hangs tough and united, rather than set us up for disappointment, the Democrats will own this economic disaster. (Will Senate Republicans follow their House brethren?) … [Read more...]

Update, 1/29: More coverage on Colorado Spending Transparency and Ed News Colorado, as well as a kind link from the Open Records blog.
This morning the Colorado Senate Education Committee got a bit of a surprise, it might seem, with a slew of concerned citizens coming forward to testify in support of Senate Bill 57 (PDF) (sponsored by state senator Ted Harvey) - which would bring something akin to full-fledged financial transparency to Colorado public schools.
It's unusual to see more than 15 average citizens come forward to testify for a piece of legislation - and rarer yet, to have many of them do so quite eloquently. Most were from the metro Denver area, a couple hailed from Weld County, and one of them drove three hours over the … [Read more...]

Four years ago, a narrow majority of Coloradans bought the slick advertising of the Referendum C tax hike. Today, statehouse Democrats seem to have forgotten all their grandiose promises. (Or were they not telling us the truth in the first place?)
A great catch by Face The State (go and listen to the brief audio clip for yourself):So we were shocked to hear JBC vice-chairman Rep. Jack Pommer, D-Boulder, assert during last week's discussion that â€œRef C wasnâ€™t designed to fix anything," and that "Ref C was an arbitrary amount of money.â€ … [Read more...]

When I recently pointed out Governor Bill Ritter's public proclamation in favor of transparency, this wasn't the kind of transparency I was talking about. Rossputin explains:There's a reason that the first thing Ritter is proposing to do is cut education and prison funding, and "temporarily" suspend the homestead exemption which lowers property tax for many senior citizens, and it's the oldest liberal trick in the book: He's setting the stage for a tax increase proposal "for the children" and with the specter of violent felons roaming the streets unless we go along.
Well, it's time to just say no to more liberal government expansion.
Yes, Bill Ritter's announcement should make it rather transparent that he and the Democrats are … [Read more...]